Why is it important to think about the employee benefit programs?

Description

Haleigh Tebben, Partner at Mercer share a couple of key insight from a research they did called ‘Inside Employee’s Mind’ and why designing a good benefit program is beyond just dollar and cents.

Video transcript:

Why is it important to think about the employee health programs?

Employee benefits represent the second largest investment that the employer makes behind compensation, and so it’s very important to make sure that employers are offering the right package and targeting the right employees.

Mercer’s recent inside employee’s mind survey found that 89% of employees say that their benefits are almost as important as their salary in why they choose a place to work. Obviously, it’s very important to make sure that employers are adequately designing the employee benefits package to attract the right employees, but also communicating it.

We find that a lot of employers are offering the right packages and benefits but are not communicating it effectively. So not even just designing the right package but also communicating it can be very important to make sure employees are understanding the benefits of what they are being provided by their employer.

However, with benefits being so important to employees, in our recent survey inside employee’s mind, 73% of employees said that they actually prefer a better benefits package that is currently being offered by their employer.

It is very important to make sure that employers are understanding benchmarks and designing a long-term benefit strategy to make sure that they are providing attractive benefits to their employees. At the end of the day, a benefits package that is designed effectively can create more engaged employees, be a tool to be used to attract more employees.

Actually, potentially help reduce your healthcare spend if you have the right benefits that you are offering, and you have the right programs in place to improve health outcomes, can enhance your competitiveness, can provide market leadership, can engage your HR team. You want to have your HR team to be part of the benefits that they are offering to the employees. There are a lot of benefits beyond just the dollars and cents of offering attractive benefits packages to your employees.